Monthly Archives: April 2018

Measure Australia, Australia’s largest drone service provider, has acquired Droneworx Pty Ltd, a NSW-based drone services company. As part of the acquisition, Brendon De Witts, Founder of Droneworx, has been appointed as the new Chief Pilot of Measure Australia. De Witts has over 2000 flight hours on remotely piloted aircraft systems and brings significant experience to the Chief Pilot role. De Witts brings operational expertise, technical skills, leadership ability and out-of-the-box thinking that the role requires.

De Witts said, “I am excited to join Measure Australia’s industry-leading team and look forward to helping the business implement its vision for the drone industry. Having significant field and management experience of drone programs, I am excited to bring a new dimension to Measure Australia’s operations.”

Outgoing Chief Pilot Simon Mapstone stays with the company in a field-based role. Mapstone sets an exemplary standard for the increasing number of field-based pilots.

The acquisition of Droneworx strengthens Measure Australia’s NSW-based offering and broadens existing delivery in the marketing and visual inspection service streams. Droneworx clients and operations will be transitioned to the Measure Australia brand while all Droneworx staff will relocate to Measure Australia’s head office in Artarmon, NSW.

ARGUS International, Inc. is pleased to announce Skytec, LLC as the world’s first Drone as a Service (DaaS) provider to complete an ARGUS Unmanned Audit.

The Platinum Rating is the highest ARGUS rating an organization operating unmanned aircraft can achieve. Only companies who have demonstrated successful implementation of industry best practices relative to their operations and maintenance with the utmost regard for safety through the evaluation of an on-site audit may achieve an ARGUS Platinum Rating. ARGUS collaborated with various internal and external subject matter experts with a vast amount of UAS experience to develop a comprehensive standard for the unmanned industry.

“Creating a safety culture is paramount to the commercial UAS industry. Companies like Skytec who focus on providing DaaS operations must be methodically examined and reviewed if the industry is to develop an effective safety ecosystem,” said Joe Moeggenberg, President and CEO of ARGUS International, Inc. “We are extremely pleased to announce Skytec as our first unmanned operator to successfully complete the ARGUS Unmanned Audit and earn the ARGUS Platinum Rating. As the first operator in the world to achieve this rating, Skytec has demonstrated a new level of safety for the UAS industry.”

“We are proud to become the first Platinum Rated Drone as a Service provider under the ARGUS Unmanned Standard,” said Bill Rogers, Skytec CEO. “UAS is a young, rapidly developing industry. Adhering to the highest possible safety protocols and standards – and undergoing a third-party audit to certify those practices – is a core tenet of Skytec’s mission. We believe that our industry will grow and scale even more successfully as more and more providers also commit to achieving higher safety ratings for their operations via third party certification.”

The ARGUS Unmanned Audit Standard was designed for commercial unmanned aircraft operations to evaluate their operational safety based upon a universal set of standards and industry best safety practices. To achieve the Platinum Rating, Drone as a Service providers must undergo a rigorous on-site audit including extensive evaluation of all safety practices, documentation and daily operations.

To attain an ARGUS Platinum Rating UAS operators must be a legal entity with applicable insurance, have UAS operational policies, have procedures and processes validated, have a functioning safety management system and an emergency response plan in place, undergo pilot background checks, have at least one UAS in operation, undergo an in-depth historical safety analysis, and complete an ARGUS on-site audit with no safety of flight findings. All significant finding from the on-site audit must be rectified to achieve an ARGUS Platinum Rating.

NovAtel is pleased to introduce several new precision positioning solutions for space-constrained applications. With enhanced positioning accuracy in a compact form, the PwrPak7D, PwrPak7DE1, and OEM7600 are ideal for automotive, airborne and other smaller unmanned systems. The PwrPak7D and PwrPak7D-E1 dual antenna, multi-frequency enclosures, OEM7600 receiver board, plus NovAtel’s new Waypoint® Inertial Explorer® Express post-processing software, will be featured at Xponential 2018.

Both the PwrPak7D and PwrPak7D-E1 include NovAtel’s Interference Toolkit with advanced interference detection and mitigation features applicable to all stages of integration. A web user interface, accessible through Ethernet or Wi-Fi, allows for quick and easy system configuration and control.

OEM7600 Receiver Board for Smaller Autonomous Systems

The OEM7600 receiver board features NovAtel’s high-performance positioning solutions in an extremely small form factor, wrapped with protective shielding to isolate emissions from surrounding electronics in confined spaces. This new receiver integrates easily with NovAtel’s SPAN technology to optimize performance during extended GNSS outages. The new OEM7600 will be commercially available this summer.

New Post-Processing Software for UAVs and Small Project Areas

Also at Xponential 2018, NovAtel is introducing Inertial Explorer Xpress (IEX), a cost effective, post-processing software for GNSS+INS datasets. Inertial Explorer Express provides the same core processing and utilities as the Waypoint Inertial Explorer software for applications including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and smaller projects. Inertial Explorer Express will produce centimeter-level position and attitude solutions compatible for LiDAR, camera and other sensor data with faster processing times and reduced complexity.

Featured image: Students in the “Fun With Drones” Interterm class flying a drone at MacLeish Field Station. Instructor Jon Caris, director of Smith’s Spatial Analysis Lab, is third from right.

As a result of a “Fun With Drones” class she took during this year’s Interterm, first-year Smithie Emily Wert quips that she is considering changing her Facebook page.

“A drone is going to be my profile photo,” Wert said with a smile at a final class session in Smith’s Spatial Analysis Lab. “This is who I am now!”

This Phantom 3 model drone was used by students in the “Fun With Drones” Interterm course.

Generating such enthusiasm was the main goal of the Interterm course taught by Jon Caris, director of the Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL), engineering major Alex Widstrand ’17 and SAL post-baccalaureate fellow Scott Gilman.

Over the course of five days in January, students explored the basics of drone technology, mapping flight missions for the small aerial devices and safety regulations governing remote-controlled drone flights.

From the very first class, students also got hands-on flying experience with two different drones, first on a simulator, then in practice sessions at Scott Gym and MacLeish Field Station.

Spatial Analysis Lab Director Jon Caris looks on while (from left) University of Massachusetts Amherst student Ina Shkurti and Smithie Zoe Dong ’18J get ready to operate a drone at MacLeish Field Station.

MacLeish turned out to be the more challenging site for flying, due to cold and windy conditions. The practice score for that day: Trees 1; Student Drone Pilots 0.

Wert, who plans to study neuroscience at Smith, said she enrolled in “Fun With Drones” hoping that flying would be the main focus.

“I actually didn’t realize there would be mapping involved,” she said. “I’m glad I signed up. The class turned out to be a lot more interesting than I’d expected.”

Geosciences major Lizzie Sturtevant ’18 had used photogrammetric data from drones during a summer research project about Paradise Pond, but had not had many opportunities to actually operate a drone.

Signing up for the Interterm class was “a logical next step,” Sturtevant said. “From here, I could choose to go on and get certified as a pilot.”

Caris said the Interterm course was designed to draw students from a range of disciplines and to inspire ideas for using drones in the arts as well as the sciences.

This picture was taken by a drone operated by Smith students at MacLeish Field Station.

The course also incorporated design thinking principles developed last spring by Widstrand ’17 and her classmates in a Design Thinking Studio course. Students in the studio course created a Drone Thinking Initiative website as a way to spark dialogue on campus about potential applications of drone technology. (The site, which developed into the Interterm course website, also features information about safety rules for operating drones and a blog about “Fun With Drones.”)

Widstrand said she was impressed by how quickly students in the Interterm course learned basic techniques for mapping and directing drone flights.

“We started with a group that was initially a bit nervous to fly, but we ended the week noticeably more confident in our maneuvers and with evident knowledge of how to safely operate the drones,” she said.

Beginners’ jitters were evident during an early practice session in Scott Gym when only one or two students initially stepped forward to try flying drones in the confines of the softball practice net.

Sturtevant was one of them. As her classmates looked on, she reviewed a safety checklist, then digitally powered up a Phantom 3 drone and directed it to hover about four feet in the air. (Military drones can fly at very high altitudes, but smaller civilian versions are legally limited to flying 400 feet above ground level in outdoor environments).

Caris was encouraging—even when the Phantom ended up in the net instead of on the landing pad. “That was actually a perfect landing,” he said to Sturtevant. “You didn’t crash it.”

When Caris asked for another volunteer pilot, numerous hands rose into the air.

Cindy Li ’18 said the hardest maneuver was the “come back home” option, which required a clear sense of the orientation of the airborne drone.

“When it’s bright outside and there is glare, it’s hard to tell which is the front of the drone,” she explained. “I was thinking that adding some bright contrasting tape to the front would help, so it’s not just a white drone against a white background of clouds.”

In addition to flying lessons, Li said she enjoyed class discussions of regulatory issues related to drones.

“So many people are using them now,” noted Li, who is majoring in engineering. “But in all of the YouTube videos filmed from drones, people don’t seem to be abiding by FAA regulations.”

Students will have a chance to apply the knowledge they gained in the Interterm class during a March field trip to St. Catherines Island, Ga., where participants will help the Kashmir World Foundation use drones to map sea turtle nesting sites and tortoise burrows.

Widstrand said five of the 11 students who enrolled in “Fun With Drones” have expressed interest in the field trip, adding, “I think they will find this practical application of their new skills to be especially rewarding.”

Caris said students in the Interterm course shared ideas for future learning opportunities on campus, including a drone racing club and more courses and research projects using drones.

Li, who will be spending this semester in China, knows exactly how she wants to pursue her newfound interest in drones.

Featured image: Students in the “Fun With Drones” Interterm class flying a drone at MacLeish Field Station. Instructor Jon Caris, director of Smith’s Spatial Analysis Lab, is third from right.

As a result of a “Fun With Drones” class she took during this year’s Interterm, first-year Smithie Emily Wert quips that she is considering changing her Facebook page.

“A drone is going to be my profile photo,” Wert said with a smile at a final class session in Smith’s Spatial Analysis Lab. “This is who I am now!”

This Phantom 3 model drone was used by students in the “Fun With Drones” Interterm course.

Generating such enthusiasm was the main goal of the Interterm course taught by Jon Caris, director of the Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL), engineering major Alex Widstrand ’17 and SAL post-baccalaureate fellow Scott Gilman.

Over the course of five days in January, students explored the basics of drone technology, mapping flight missions for the small aerial devices and safety regulations governing remote-controlled drone flights.

From the very first class, students also got hands-on flying experience with two different drones, first on a simulator, then in practice sessions at Scott Gym and MacLeish Field Station.

Spatial Analysis Lab Director Jon Caris looks on while (from left) University of Massachusetts Amherst student Ina Shkurti and Smithie Zoe Dong ’18J get ready to operate a drone at MacLeish Field Station.

MacLeish turned out to be the more challenging site for flying, due to cold and windy conditions. The practice score for that day: Trees 1; Student Drone Pilots 0.

Wert, who plans to study neuroscience at Smith, said she enrolled in “Fun With Drones” hoping that flying would be the main focus.

“I actually didn’t realize there would be mapping involved,” she said. “I’m glad I signed up. The class turned out to be a lot more interesting than I’d expected.”

Geosciences major Lizzie Sturtevant ’18 had used photogrammetric data from drones during a summer research project about Paradise Pond, but had not had many opportunities to actually operate a drone.

Signing up for the Interterm class was “a logical next step,” Sturtevant said. “From here, I could choose to go on and get certified as a pilot.”

Caris said the Interterm course was designed to draw students from a range of disciplines and to inspire ideas for using drones in the arts as well as the sciences.

This picture was taken by a drone operated by Smith students at MacLeish Field Station.

The course also incorporated design thinking principles developed last spring by Widstrand ’17 and her classmates in a Design Thinking Studio course. Students in the studio course created a Drone Thinking Initiative website as a way to spark dialogue on campus about potential applications of drone technology. (The site, which developed into the Interterm course website, also features information about safety rules for operating drones and a blog about “Fun With Drones.”)

Widstrand said she was impressed by how quickly students in the Interterm course learned basic techniques for mapping and directing drone flights.

“We started with a group that was initially a bit nervous to fly, but we ended the week noticeably more confident in our maneuvers and with evident knowledge of how to safely operate the drones,” she said.

Beginners’ jitters were evident during an early practice session in Scott Gym when only one or two students initially stepped forward to try flying drones in the confines of the softball practice net.

Sturtevant was one of them. As her classmates looked on, she reviewed a safety checklist, then digitally powered up a Phantom 3 drone and directed it to hover about four feet in the air. (Military drones can fly at very high altitudes, but smaller civilian versions are legally limited to flying 400 feet above ground level in outdoor environments).

Caris was encouraging—even when the Phantom ended up in the net instead of on the landing pad. “That was actually a perfect landing,” he said to Sturtevant. “You didn’t crash it.”

When Caris asked for another volunteer pilot, numerous hands rose into the air.

Cindy Li ’18 said the hardest maneuver was the “come back home” option, which required a clear sense of the orientation of the airborne drone.

“When it’s bright outside and there is glare, it’s hard to tell which is the front of the drone,” she explained. “I was thinking that adding some bright contrasting tape to the front would help, so it’s not just a white drone against a white background of clouds.”

In addition to flying lessons, Li said she enjoyed class discussions of regulatory issues related to drones.

“So many people are using them now,” noted Li, who is majoring in engineering. “But in all of the YouTube videos filmed from drones, people don’t seem to be abiding by FAA regulations.”

Students will have a chance to apply the knowledge they gained in the Interterm class during a March field trip to St. Catherines Island, Ga., where participants will help the Kashmir World Foundation use drones to map sea turtle nesting sites and tortoise burrows.

Widstrand said five of the 11 students who enrolled in “Fun With Drones” have expressed interest in the field trip, adding, “I think they will find this practical application of their new skills to be especially rewarding.”

Caris said students in the Interterm course shared ideas for future learning opportunities on campus, including a drone racing club and more courses and research projects using drones.

Li, who will be spending this semester in China, knows exactly how she wants to pursue her newfound interest in drones.

At Oregon State University (OSU), Oregon education professionals gathered on campus for the state’s first Drone Training for Educators conference.

“We had 30 educators from public and private schools all around the state come out to participate, including a teacher from the Oregon School for the Deaf and a program in central Oregon that serves migrant workers,” says Mark Peters, OSU research security officer.

According to Peters, the initial impulse that led to the creation of this program came from the Oregon Department of Education, which contacted the university to learn more about the technology and how teachers could use it to build interest in the so-called “STEM” subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. “They wanted to understand the safety, insurance, and legal requirements for using drones in their programs, and that led to us holding four webinars over the previous school year, which culminated in this three-day conference.”

With the beaver as its mascot, OSU has embraced drone technology to enhance its work in forestry, marine science, and other fields.

Center for Excellence

Hosting the program was a natural fit for OSU, which is developing a national center for excellence in drone technology. “We have faculty all over the university who are doing amazing things with drones,” says Peters. “For example, Professor Julie Adams has put me on notice as the regulatory compliance guy that in the next few years she wants to put up to 300 micro drones in the National Airspace System that will be completely autonomous. Right now, she and her team are working on the artificial intelligence that will allow this swarm to think and decide on its own how to accomplish a given task.”

Located in the state’s verdant Willamette Valley, Oregon State University was established in 1858 as a land-grant college with an emphasis on agriculture. However, it has continued to innovate and expand its programs to encompass such cutting-edge subjects as drones, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

In addition to the work being done to create the next generation of drone technology, the university is using drones to look at real-world problems in new and different ways. “The professors are telling me that the drone is the new microscope,” Peters explains. “They are using this technology to see and measure things that were never possible before now.” As an example, he cites the work of Dr. Leigh Torres, a marine biologist who has used drones to achieve a number of breakthroughs in the study of whales. “She was the first person to ever capture video of a blue whale calf nursing, and also the first to determine that humpback whales are actually social diners, that will synchronize their headstands before they dive for krill.”

Brian Whiteside of Drone Complier provides attendees at the Drone Training in Education conference with a basic understanding of the Part 107 regulations that govern drone operations in the United States.

Doing Their Part

Throughout the conference, attendees heard from researchers doing cutting-edge work at the university, as well as drone experts who talked about how to conduct flight operations safely and in compliance with the rules and regulations established by the Federal Aviation Administration. “It was important for us to inspire them, but also to give them the nuts and bolts they will need to establish their own drone programs when they go back to their classrooms,” says Peters. In addition to a compressed Remote Pilot In Command (RPIC) course taught by Brian Whiteside of Drone Complier, OSU is giving the teachers ongoing access to its web-based Part 107 training.

Peters intends for the Drone Training for Educators program to become an annual event at OSU, yet another piece of the university’s ambitious plan to stand at the forefront of the drone and robotics revolution. “Looking out at the next five to ten years, I see Oregon State rivaling Cal Tech, MIT, and Georgia Tech as one of the nation’s leading schools in robotics and artificial intelligence.” –Patrick Sherman

Check out this mission-ready drone from Aeryon Defense USA! Designed specifically for use in the field by small groups of soldiers operating in hostile combat environments, the R80D is designed to fulfill many different missions with interchangeable payloads that include visible-light and thermal cameras, as well as payload delivery options for equipment weighing up to 4.4 pounds. It is fully capable of performing a tactical ISR role, as well as providing persistent overwatch using a tethered power supply option. Quick and easy to assemble in the field, operators can be trained in just a few days with no prior knowledge of drones or aeronautics. In this video, the Roswell Flight Test Crew provides coverage of a press event held by drone manufacturer Aeryon on the first day of the 2018 AUVSI Xponential show in Denver, Colorado. Speaking during the presentation are: William McHale, the CEO of Aeryon Labs; Tom Jackson, the Vice President and General Manager of Aeroyon Defense USA; and, Mark Holden, the Director of Defense Solutions for Aeryon Defense USA.

Check out this mission-ready drone from Aeryon Defense USA! Designed specifically for use in the field by small groups of soldiers operating in hostile combat environments, the R80D is designed to fulfill many different missions with interchangeable payloads that include visible-light and thermal cameras, as well as payload delivery options for equipment weighing up to 4.4 pounds. It is fully capable of performing a tactical ISR role, as well as providing persistent overwatch using a tethered power supply option. Quick and easy to assemble in the field, operators can be trained in just a few days with no prior knowledge of drones or aeronautics. In this video, the Roswell Flight Test Crew provides coverage of a press event held by drone manufacturer Aeryon on the first day of the 2018 AUVSI Xponential show in Denver, Colorado. Speaking during the presentation are: William McHale, the CEO of Aeryon Labs; Tom Jackson, the Vice President and General Manager of Aeroyon Defense USA; and, Mark Holden, the Director of Defense Solutions for Aeryon Defense USA.

Consortiq is bringing together the tools to ensure that drone operators adhere to regulatory and insurance restrictions, via its new visionary concept, AssureTech. The benefit to drone pilots is reassurance that they have documentation of compliance if needed; the benefit to risk management officers is that an approved and agreed-upon standard of factors has been inspected and verified as safe for flight.

AssureTech will help the industry take the necessary leap forward in enabling the next level of UAV operations to become part of routine operations. By amalgamating Consortiq’s professional training, consultancy, and software provision services, companies using drones and individual drone operators flights will be safe and in compliance with industry best practices.

In order to safely operate their drones, pilots do not necessarily need to know all of the intrinsic regulatory details that aviation authorities implement; Consortiq AssureTech integrates the most recent relevant unmanned aviation vehicle rulings so compliance and safety are “assured.”

“The next ultimate aim that users have – routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight – requires that operators demonstrate to regulators that they are aware of the risk and can mitigate it where possible,” Paul Rigby, CEO of Consortiq, stated.

The UAV industry is working on the technology to enable BVLOS operations, including the development of unmanned traffic management systems (UTM), while regulators are concerned with ensuring that the skies are safe, based on proven concepts, procedures, and technologies.

What is needed is a link between these two efforts that transitions the vision of BVLOS to a safe reality by assuring regulators that the emerging technologies implementation can be trusted.

“Risk can never be completely eliminated – all types of flight come with some risk – but it is necessary to mitigate this as much as possible from a safety perspective,” Rigby added. “By using AssureTech, users will have the assurance that they are not being negligent, and it will also facilitate an expansion of UAV capabilities to meet the needs of industry.”

Consortiq will use the most appropriate tools to ensure that this is possible, be it training of operators, consulting on how to carry out operations, or provision of its award-winning drone management software, CQNet.

Rigby will be presenting AssureTech while speaking on the“Technology Advancements Moving BVLOS Operations Forward”panel at 11am on Thursday, May 3rd at AUVSI’s Xponential.Joe Morra and Kevin Gallagher, managers, Safety and Integration Division Federal Aviation Administration UAS Integration Office, and Ran Krauss, CEO & Co-founder ofAirobotics, are also on the panel.

About

As cutting-edge innovators in drone and unmanned technology, Consortiq makes it easier and safer for organizations to put drones in the sky. Consortiq transforms businesses through unmanned aircraft system (UAS) software, training, consultancy, and hardware.

Lynx VTOL is a vertical takeoff and landing drone for precision agriculture and surveying. The new VTOL design is based on the existing long-endurance Lynx airframe, but can takeoff and land like a copter thanks to four dedicated vertical thrust motors. Lynx VTOL blends the ease-of-use and flexibility of a multirotor with the endurance and speed of an airplane.

Swift Radioplanes, LLC (SRP) was founded in 2013 in mile-high Prescott Arizona to create fixed-wing sUAS for survey and mapping. The company emphasizes simplicity, ruggedness, and performance in their aircraft, while always keeping operator interaction and workflow in mind. SRP’s design philosophy traces back to the founding members’ experience as UAV operators in the US Army. Their Lynx UAS is a clear example of this with an industry-leading flight time of up to three hours, durable Kevlar composite construction, and the user-friendly Swift Ground Control Station (GCS). The Lynx airframe and Swift GCS were both designed from scratch by SRP and undergo continuous improvement and updates.

In addition to Lynx and Swift GCS, SRP actively participates and develops for ArduPilot, the professional open source autopilot system supporting, multi-copters, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and rovers. ArduPilot powers the ubiquitous Pixhawk and Pixhawk 2 autopilot boards.

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YouTube channel FliteTest has released a new video in which they design, build and test a real-life version of Thor’s famous hammer, Mjölnir. Thor is the chiselled Norse god of thunder as well as the star of more Marvel movies than you can shake a giant flying hammer at. Those familiar with his character will know […]

Researchers at Yale University have developed a UAV which uses nature-inspired robotic talons to “perch and rest” in places that would normally be inaccessible. The group, led by Kaiyu Hang, were looking to make drones that fly in a more energy efficient manner. They observed how birds and bats use structures to conserve their energy when […]

Today Kickstarter is hosting the launch of a new mind-controlled drone and headset. Chinese company EEGSmart have developed brain-machine interface (BMI) technology which they intend to market to the masses through their UDrone mini-quad and UMind Lite headset. A year ago we brought you a story about drones you can control with your mind on display […]

President Donald Trump’s administration has reversed an Obama era policy requiring US intelligence services to report the number of civilians killed by American drones. On March 6, Trump signed an executive order revoking the requirement for intelligence agencies to publicly announce the number of non-combatants killed by US drone strikes or other attacks on terrorist […]

Engineers who run a ‘drone hacking’ website say that software designed to prevent drones from flying near airports is very easy to bypass. Drone producers, such as Chinese giant DJI, produce UAVs with inbuilt geofencing software which creates ‘virtual walls’ stopping crafts from being able to enter restricted air space near airports or military bases. There […]

The world’s largest agricultural drone fleet is transforming the way farmers manage their crops. Through a collaboration with Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont, DroneDeploy’s advanced mapping software is powering Corteva Agriscience’s fleet of more than 400 DJI drones across the company’s global teams, including:

Spanning three continents, DroneDeploy’s Live Map technology provides Corteva Agriscience’s UAV fleet of DJI drones with immediate insights to diagnose and correct agronomic, disease, and pest concerns, as well as to suggest locations for optimal product placement.

Agriculture may be as old as civilization itself, but thanks to new technologies that make it easier to monitor crops and maximize yields, the industry remains on the cutting edge. In less than 15 minutes, advanced UAV technology can survey a 160-acre field to identify variations in plant soil and health, giving farmers direct access to real-time aerial views and data to help make informed agronomic decisions. The result is a full-scale drone operation that gives agronomists and contract seed growers the ability to make timely determinations that directly impact seed yields and quality.

DroneDeploy’s Live Map technology provides real-time crop insights that enable growers to take immediate agronomic actions in the field. Whether it’s identifying an area that lacks irrigation or a particular crop that’s sprouting better (or worse) than expected, agricultural UAVs enable farmers to course correct issues through powerful, data-driven insights. Once drone fleets are ready to be deployed to field teams, drone operators undergo training to determine how to harness the power of aerial technology and ensure that operations adhere to local aviation regulations.

Utilizing UAVs developed by DJI, the collaboration between Corteva Agriscience and DroneDeploy brings some of the world’s most powerful agriscience solutions together with the world’s leading commercial drones and commercial drone software. Corteva Agriscience’s portfolio of products includes some of the world’s most recognizable brands in agriculture, including Pioneer, Brevant seeds, and Encirca and Granular, as well as Crop Protection products developed through active chemistry and technology.

DJI, the world leader in commercial and civilian drones, makes up more than 70% of the drone market and offers a wide variety of UAV products across many different industries. Combined with DroneDeploy’s user-friendly platform for real-time sharable drone maps and 3D models, farmers and agronomists across the globe will be able to carry out data-driven actions to keep fields full, healthy, and ready for seasons to come.

Where to Learn MoreLearn more about the improvements to the DroneDeploy Map Engine.Explore the DroneDeploy App Market to see more than 80 apps you can use today to generate insights with drone data.eBook: Drones in Agriculture

Be sure to read our latest eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Drones on the Farm.

In our previous post, we discuss the many ways you can begin using drones to improve inspections in the oil and gas sector. In this post, we take a look at the impact drones have on operations—and why it’s time you should consider investing in a drone program.

Drones provide O&G companies many benefits, including cost savings, improved communication, a safer work environment, and more accurate data. Read on to explore the key ways drones can transform your workflows.

Inspecting O&G infrastructure and gathering critical data with drones cost substantially less than traditional inspection methods that require ground crews or manned flights. Drones are tough birds and can withstand harsh temperatures and other conditions. They get much closer to infrastructure than a helicopter or airplane, providing better visuals and data. Drones also minimize downtime by avoiding the need to shut down operations for inspections and by catching leaks and other maintenance issues early, lowering remediation costs.

Drones enable employees to conduct inspection and monitoring tasks without exposing themselves to the typical dangers of O&G operations. As a result, work hours lost due to injuries decline, medical expenses and insurance costs shrink, and the number of workplace events reported to OSHA and other regulatory agencies drop.

Safer Work Environments

Manual infrastructure inspections are often dangerous. For example, inspectors at wells and offshore rigs must climb up and down ladders and along catwalks — and even use cranes or harnesses and rappelling equipment to reach equipment. Inspectors sometimes must work in close proximity to harmful chemicals and dangerous machinery.

Drones perform inspections without risking employee safety. They’re particularly useful for inspections after blowouts or natural disasters — or when sending a ground crew to a site may be difficult, costly or unsafe.

Better, More Accurate Data

Drones provide a flexible platform for a wide range of cameras and sensors. They can collect data needed for situations requiring real-time solutions or store data for later analysis. Businesses can easily integrate digitized mapping information and other data from drone flights into analytical and AI solutions for advanced processing. For example, software solutions use topographical and geological data gathered by drones to create models that help identify promising oil and gas drill sites.

Not only do drones gather information more efficiently than human inspectors, the digital data enables employees to make better, data-driven decisions. This drastically reduces downtime, catches conflicts and issues faster, and helps keep your operation running like the well-oiled machine that it is.

Superior Communication

The remote nature of oil and gas work often requires operators to communicate with workers on sites around the world. This can present a challenge to managers and engineers working from the headquarters and collaborating with the boots on the ground. But drones can make things easier. Workers on the ground can fly drones on their site and upload the data to the cloud where back office managers can review and coordinate further inspection or follow ups — all without leaving the desk chair. Using software such as DroneDeploy makes it easy for the back office to markup maps or drop in annotations in real time so that inspectors can check on pressure points, leaks, or other potential issues.

Where to Learn More

The latest drone technology — like aerial mapping, thermal imaging, and digital terrain modeling — gives you a rich set of data to streamline your workflows and generate real-time insights.

A free guide to measuring stockpiles and gathering accurate inventory counts with UAVs.

Whether you work in the construction, mining, or aggregates sectors, stockpile management is a critical requirement on any job site. But measuring stockpiles can be unsafe, time-consuming, and expensive. This puts you in a difficult position. You need accurate data to run your business operations, but you shouldn’t have to send your survey team into the field for hours to clamber across stockpiles on a dangerous job site.

What if you could gather the same survey data in minutes from the safety of the ground, all while achieving higher accuracy and freeing up your survey team to focus on other high-priority projects? Sound too good to be true? Nope. Drones can help.

While you may be familiar with drone photography, drones are also a trusted tool for surveying and measurement. They eliminate many of the challenges companies face with traditional survey solutions. And drones paired with powerful photogrammetry software from DroneDeploy can help lower your data collection costs, increase accuracy, save you time, and keep your team out of harm’s way — all without having to hire an entire survey team or invest in expensive laser or lidar hardware.

“Everyone should be using drones for stockpile analysis. It’s miles ahead of standard surveying.” — Tecia White, President at Whitewater Hydrogeology Ltd.Read the full case study

Over the last 4 years, our team has worked with thousands of customers measuring stockpiles with drones. In that time, we’ve learned the techniques that produce highly-accurate results that our customers expect from DroneDeploy.

In our latest eBook, we take a deep dive into the stockpile measurement workflow using DroneDeploy—covering best practices and answers to the most frequently asked questions from our customers.

The best practices for flying, processing, and analyzing stockpiles with DroneDeployHow to get precise volume measurements and generate instant stockpile reportsHow to achieve high degrees of measurement accuracy and why it mattersThe most common app integrations for stockpile management used by DroneDeploy customersHow three innovative companies have used DroneDeploy’s stockpile measurement tools to cut costs, save time, and improve safety on their job sitesWhere to Learn More

Some of the largest oil and gas companies around the world now deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, to address a wide variety of operational challenges. This rapidly improving technology, along with advances in big data and artificial intelligence, is poised to transform the O&G industry in the coming years.

The aerial intelligence provided by drones offers several key benefits, including safer inspections and helping companies comply with regulatory requirements — while saving them millions of dollars in labor, remediation, and other costs.

Drones are the perfect solution for conducting visual inspections of infrastructure and gathering extensive data. An increasing number of O&G companies use drones to perform three basic industry functions — pipeline inspection and monitoring, oil well and rig inspection, and surveying and construction monitoring — at a significantly lower cost than ground, manned aircraft or helicopter inspection crews.

Read on to learn more about the leading uses of drones in the oil and gas sector.

Pipeline Inspection and Monitoring

By taking photos and videos of above-ground pipelines, drones allow inspectors in the field or engineers in a remote location to view pipes, either in real time or later. The operator can zero in on areas of concern to gather additional information and, if necessary, recommend that a ground crew visually check the area.

By examining the vegetation index, inspectors can identify specific areas of concern with DroneDeploy, catching leaks before they spread. Read the case study.

To detect potential underground leaks, drones take photos along pipeline routes. User-friendly software from DroneDeploy combines these images, creating high-resolution vegetation maps that identify plant kill-off zones, which may indicate a leak. Equipping a drone with an infrared camera provides an additional way to inspect pipelines: Thermal imagery of pipeline routes reveal hotspots, which may indicate potential defects in pipeline insulation or leaks invisible to the human eye.

Drone images also detect anomalies along a pipeline network or any encroachments, such as construction or roadwork, on a right-of-way that could threaten the integrity of the pipeline. In case of significant leaks, explosions or other emergency situations, drones provide real-time video to help emergency response teams assess the situation before sending in crews.

An operator inspects an oil well using drone POV goggles, while remaining safely on the ground. Photo courtesy of Bruin E&P Partners.Oil Well and Rig Inspection

O&G companies also use drones to photograph oil wells and offshore rigs throughout the initial drilling process. Once the well is operating, drones efficiently monitor operations. For example, they provide a close-up look at a flare stack while it’s in service. That provides a real benefit to the traditional approach: shutting down the flare system and assigning an inspector to climb the stack to examine it. In this case, a drone inspection saves weeks of physical inspection preparation and avoids significant loss of productivity and revenue due to an operational shutdown.

This drone-generated 3D model of oil storage tanks replaced helicopter imagery and saved $3500 over a five-month period. Read the full case study.

Drone inspections help companies prevent health and safety events (HSE), allowing them to address operational issues without sending employees into dangerous zones. Drones also provide easy surveillance of remote or hard-to-reach assets, such as storage tanks.

Drones are taking on an expanding role in both the oil exploration and construction stages.2 They survey prospective drilling locations and gather key data without the time and expense of traditional surveying methods. Once a well site is ready for development, drones deployed during the construction stage of wells, rigs, pipelines and refineries conduct crucial as-built surveys, allowing managers to keep track of a project’s progress and provide quality assurance of the build-outs.

Construction compliance officers use drone photos to compare actual conditions to pre-construction designs, as well as to detect and correct plan defects and deviations and spot any potential safety issues. This information also helps streamline decision-making throughout the project. Companies can even create, document and share a visual timeline with all stakeholders. Once construction is finished, drones provide a digital 3-D representation of structures to use as a baseline reference.

This orthomosaic drone map shows construction progress taking place on a well site. Map courtesy of Bruin E&P Partners.

Drones provide extremely precise aerial intelligence that simplifies and improves a wide range of O&G processes. Whether inspecting hundreds of miles of oil pipelines for leaks, helping employees keep operations in compliance with regulations or enabling companies to construct infrastructure more efficiently, agile and flexible UAVs have quickly become a go-to tool for operators around the world.

Product Release Wrap-Up January 2019Kick off the New Year with improved accuracy and AI tools from DroneDeploy

Since launching the Projects interface last month, our team has been busy implementing a series of new features to improve your team’s productivity and overall map accuracy in 2019.

Read on to learn more about new automated flight settings, map alignment capabilities, Autodesk export options, and a suite of AI tools now available to DroneDeploy customers.

The Joy of aligned maps in action over the course of a project.Align Maps Over Time — Instantly.

Comparing maps over time is one of the most common uses of DroneDeploy. But comparing the same areas can be tricky if the maps don’t line up. Unfortunately, GPS accuracy varies and maps of the same location can shift anywhere between 5–10 meters without the use of ground control points (GCPs).

To overcome this problem, we built a new solution into our proprietary Map Engine to align new maps with those previously made at the same location. As an added benefit, the absolute accuracy and scale of a map made with GCPs will improve the accuracy of future maps in the same area — meaning you can map more often with less effort and still get great results.

Use map alignment in conjunction with the “Side-by-Side” app, to see how things have changed on your site.

Automatic Map Alignment is now available to all paying DroneDeploy customers.

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Filter and Sort Map Annotations

Have you ever had trouble finding the annotation or measurement that you’re looking for in a map with dozens or even hundreds of annotations? Or perhaps you’ve wanted to hide specific annotations and focus on those that are most important? New improvements to DroneDeploy annotations make both of these tasks possible.

Now you can view a list of all of the annotations on your map. You can then select or hide specific annotations, and you can even use the search and filter tools to look for specific annotations or annotation types.

Filter annotations by measurement type using the filter icon on the dashboard.Simplify GCP Tagging with Ground Control AI

For those times when absolute accuracy is required, efficient use of GCPs and checkpoints for mapping is extremely important. For the last six months, thanks to thousands of DroneDeploy customers tagging GCPs, we’ve trained our machine learning algorithms to automatically identify and geolocate the most popular types of GCP markers automatically.

Here are a few examples of the types of GCP markers that DroneDeploy can now detect and geolocate to save you time:

If some, or all of your GCPs are automatically identified, you’ll get a notification in the typical email workflow. You will notice that many of your GCPs are already tagged when you open the link.

Ground Control AI will continue to improve as you use it, and will learn from your corrections over time.

Once GCPs have been detected, you can finish selecting any additional GCPs that may be in the map.

Ground Control AI is now available to all Business and Enterprise customers.

Detect and Annotate Objects with Count AI

We launched our Counting tool last August. Since then, customers have annotated more than 360,000 objects. Uses include auditing solar panels, asset quantification, damage assessments, crop yield estimation, and more. With a significant amount of counting data under our belts, our team can now rapidly train our counting algorithms to detect and count custom objects for our enterprise customers.

Select an area and Count AI does the rest.

The first two object types we are supporting are cars and trees, but if your workflow requires counting any object series in your maps, sign up for our beta program today and contact your DroneDeploy Account Manager to learn more about this new feature.

Measuring stockpiles on construction sites, mines, and quarries is one of the most common use of DroneDeploy’s measurement tools. To speed up the stockpile measurement workflow, we developed our Stockpile AI assistant to annotate and measure stockpile volumes with a single click.

When you select the Stockpile AI icon, DroneDeploy will detect and highlight all stockpiles present on your map. You can then generate an instant volume measurement by selecting the stockpile you wish to measure. It’s that easy.

Once the volume annotation is created, it’s still possible to customize the stockpile boundary as you usually would. Keep in mind that like our other machine learning tools, your existing annotations and corrections power Stockpile AI — which will continue to improve the more you use it.

Stockpile AI is now available to all Enterprise customers.

Import Point Clouds from DroneDeploy to AutoDesk

Our construction customers have frequently asked to import drone-generated point clouds from DroneDeploy to AutoDesk Civil 3D, Revit, and Navisworks. We’re happy to announce this capability is now available in DroneDeploy.

To directly import your point cloud files to AutoDesk, choose the AutoDesk (.rcp) format when you export your next point cloud. The .rcp data will also include a .rcs point cloud as well. These new point cloud formats can be exported using all the local and custom coordinate systems we support for existing exports.